


on eddies, in lees (you can see the seems remix)

by Kayndred



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Magic, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:49:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29528745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayndred/pseuds/Kayndred
Summary: An escape. A town. Three fae on the run.If fate had shuffled the cards just a little differently, what would have been?
Kudos: 4





	on eddies, in lees (you can see the seems remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026909) by [morethanthedark (Kayndred)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayndred/pseuds/morethanthedark). 



🜁

Mist, thick enough to blind, slouches down the hillside. It is night - the stars are sharp and clear above them, the trees divested of their finery, naked in the chill. Grantaire feels it, the blistering cold chill rooted in his bones. Across his shoulders, the sinuous lines of his tattoo twist and coil, little claws gripping muscle tight.

“I can taste the dirt of the Hill in my teeth,” he whispers, and it feels - sacrilegious, overloud. Curled beside him, Feuilly stiffens, head jerking up to listen, to scent the air, fingers spread wide across the brittle grass. Tapping. Feeling the strings of his magic, the brand of the Hunt across him. 

Grantaire wraps an arm around his shoulders, leans in close. Sighs out air hot enough to steam and lets Feuilly curl against the slick warm of his side. Naked, all, his scales are moon-silver in the night. Both Feuilly and Jehan, snugged up close against his other side, retain their fine fur, Jehan’s fawn dappled and bronze, Feuilly red-black and faintly striped. They look ill fitted, mismatched. Poorly made. Too many limbs, unnaturally colored. Inhuman eyes look back at him from faces made of piecemeal human memories. Grantaire feels like he could unspool from his seams and no one would be the wiser.

“Where do we go?” Jehan asks, whisper soft between them. 

And there’s the rub. None will leave the others, and yet together they are the largest target. 

But Grantaire cannot bear to be alone. Neither, if the looks on Feuilly and Jehan’s faces are anything to go by, can they. 

The claws of his fingers brush through their short fur as he pulls them closer, pulls them tight. Tails and arms and unblinking eyes all. He wishes he were enough to protect them, and knows he’s not.

“Anywhere we want.”

🜃

The closest town has some nonsense human name, but it draws them. Human music and human food and human lives like uncertain wine at the back of their throats, the crush of them a presence, a vibration above normal hearing. At the town’s border, a low stone wall creeping with moss and sprouting weeds, they hunker down and breathe, waiting.

“Anything?” Whispers Feuilly, ears furred and pointed and twitching at every bird call and vole step. Grantaire has him in his lap, framed by legs and arms to hide his mismatched appearance. Jehan, almost completely deer-headed, looks over the wall with falcon eyes, gaze sweeping from room to room and along alley ends. 

He ducks down, dragging a hand over his face and forcing the animal features away with a jerk. “Nothing,” he replies. It trails oddly, and he swallows it away. “No servants, or shades, or anything else of his.” 

Relief is thin and fleeting. Grantaire strokes their sides with fingers that don’t bend the right way, biting at his lip. Steam leaks in tendrils between his teeth. 

“I’ll go,” he says, stretching his legs out in front of them. He thinks of human legs, of bipedal ambulation, of five toes and no scales. None at all.

The shift is slow, and grimacing, bones bending and shortening to fit. Harder than an illusion, but with enough time and magic, a stable shape nonetheless. 

It’s imperfect, and it aches. He mends his clothes to fit his new-shaped limbs so at least he won’t  _ look _ the part of shambling wretch. Walking in itself might be a problem, but he wouldn’t look like he’d crawled out of a swamp to do it.

Feuilly and Jehan don’t argue, helping to adjust his outfit to cover the most of him. Skin was hard to change. So much of what Grantaire  _ knew _ of himself was reflected in what he could see, and he’d seen scales and claws and too many legs for his entire life. It was like working to change a Name, and meant he sometimes ended up patchy when stressed.

Clad in boots and breeches, a long sleeved shirt with voluminous sleeves and tight cuffs, a neck scarf, a cape, and gloves; Grantaire wove around himself a reflective compulsion, encouraging passing eyes to look away and forget. Those who retained any memory wouldn’t be able to pin down his features enough to describe him to anyone. 

“Good?” he asked Jehan, attempting a smile. He felt like he still had too many teeth.

Jehan’s fingers flutter over his cheeks, his brow, his lips, smoothing away the traces of his nature. His magic drips into the fabric of Grantaire’s hood, the weave of his scarf. A network. Linked pieces of a whole mirage. 

“Good.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to go somewhere with this, but now I'm stuck so. I just really like the language here, and I don't want to hoard my wips forever and just like, not do anything with them. So here it is! 
> 
> Oh, 'you can see the seems' is from Witch by the bird and the bee. 
> 
> [Guess where I am.](https://morethanthedark.tumblr.com/)


End file.
